Day Seven (On Day Nine) - Unanounced?

OK, last entry was a day ahead, this one is three days behind...!

I've had a busy few days, what with work and life and stuff. Work's been interesting recently, with an announced, 'unannounced' visit by the Healthcare Commission meaning a mass of work being done to ensure we are meeting the standards we profess to in our policies and literature. In reality, this meant ensuring everyone possible had received their Infection Control training, that all wards and departments were clean and clutter free and that staff were aware of and adhering to policy. It's about what we should be doing that so easily has corners cut to it when we're overworked.

Thankfully, being a relatively (8 year old) new ward, we're generally clean and have a fabulous domestic team that keeps us that way (our latest environmental audit score was 98%) and so it was more about staff training and awareness (also very good already) and de-cluttering those areas that'd become a little overcrowded (namely the store rooms!) One of the biggest challenges was ensuring nothing was being stored 'on the floor' - whilst boxed up, items should still be on shelves rather than floors, to allow for cleaning but with limited storage space, it can be a nightmare to effect this. It's taken a lot of work with the entire ward team and frantic matrons to get everything above floor level but the staff have been pretty great in maintaining this.

Of course, having attained the standard (much easier than some places really) we weren't actually visited by the Healthcare Commission personally (can't say I wasn't relieved). I do however want to build on what we've achieved in integrating a new 'Productive Ward' initiative to help us be more efficient in how we run the ward, to allow us a little more time to spend caring! It all sounds good on paper and I've heard great reports about this initiative so fingers crossed we get selected for the first wave of introduction of this new plan... I think we can only go from strength to strength!

PoMo = 7/9
WrMo = 15266

Jxx